Tag: Alternate Energy Source

One of the biggest hurdles with regards to going green is that it is too expensive. Most people would like to use green technologies in their home, but it is the cost that discourages them. Take solar panels. Installing solar panels to take care of the energy needs of the home will cost approximately $20,000 and take nearly 20 yrs to pay back.

Yet there are newer green technologies that do not burn a hole in your wallet and that are as effective, if not more effective than current technologies because they use materials that are found in abundance, like sunlight, salt and sand. (What’s next for the future – Nuclear vs Solar? Read the complete article)

Clean water from dirty.

Generally affluents were discharged into large water bodies because making them clean was too expensive. In the US treating affluents in large affluent treatment plants uses up almost 1.5% of the entire annual electrical usage of the nation. Now however a simple, yet cheap technology has been invented to make these affluents clean.

The device called the planar microfluidic reactor or photocatalyst, is a very simple device. It is a rectangular glass container that is coated on the inside with titanium dioxide. This is the active ingredient that is found in most sunscreen lotions. Titanium dioxide works by releasing electrons when it comes in contact with sunlight. These electrons react with impurities in the water, converting them into harmless substances.

The efficiency of this system is dependent on two things, microfulidics which is transporting water through tiny channels, and photocatalysis which is the use of sunlight to break down impurities. Both these systems have been developed separately, but it took a team from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to put them together.

The through put of the device is very small as of now, but the team is working on scaling up the model to achieve a through put of 1,000 liters per hr. Hopefully this device will help cut down the amount of affluent discharge into water bodies helping to keep the World a green place.

Cheap fuel cells

Fuel cells are very green in that they burn only Hydrogen, and give off water. The only problem with them so far has been the cost of generating this hydrogen. As of now making the Hydrogen has proved to be much more expensive and energy intensive than the amount of energy that the resulting Hydrogen can give.

A scientist at the Michigan State University has now found a way to generate Hydrogen very cheaply. The raw materials are Sodium and Silicon which is obtained from sea salt and sand. This sodium and silicon are combined to form Sodium sillicide. When water is added to this it releases Hydrogen. The by product is Sodium sillicate, which is a common ingredient in toothpaste.

This system has the potential to have a fuel cycle because the byproduct of a fuel cell is waqter. This water can be added to the Sodium Sillicide to form Hydrogen which can be used in the fuel cell once again to generate electricity and water.

Both technologies are in the early stages of development, but they have a lot of potential to help generate clean electricity which will help power us in the future.

If we listen to the nuclear industry, there is no alternative to nuclear power for the future. Nuclear power is very clean, and is also quite cheap. Although it is very capital intensive, their life cycles are also very long which means that they can produce electricity for a very long time. This was the main reason why many developing countries like China and India went in massively for capacity addition in the form of new nuclear power stations.

Yet with the recent, imminent catastrophe that is unfolding in front of our eyes in Japan, this statement has been called into question. Even if the technology is very clean, there are a number of risks inherent in a nuclear power plant, and this is not something that is often discussed. Many people think that it is the most cost effective way to generate power, and cost is a major criteria when it comes to new investments.

A team from Queen’s university have however taken up this gauntlet and set out to calculate if nuclear power is indeed as cost effective as it is made out to be. They calculated the total cost of the construction of the plant, included all the indirect public funding it receives, and added the cost of liability in the event of an accident as is happening right now in Japan.

They took 100 nuclear plants that are currently operating in the United States as the basis for their study. They then compared this to the most abundant source of energy in the world today, sunlight. They found that when all costs are included into the factor, nuclear power is actually more expensive than solar power.

As of now the only reason why solar power is not used on a wider scale is because of the high initial cost of installation. This means that the cost of the power produced too goes up. As of now the cost of producing one KW using traditional methods is around 12 – 15 cents. Many power plants have even managed to bring this cost down to less than 10 cents. When compared to solar power that costs between 25 and 50 cents depending on the technology used, this seems logical.

The problem is that with recent advancements in solar power technology, the efficiency of photo-voltaic cells have gone up tremendously. Apart from this other new technological innovations like using solar concentrators in series have given much more efficiency than standard solar cells. This has brought down the cost of one KW to between 15 and 18 cents which is just a little more than existing costs.

Experts say that if the size of power plants could be increased, and two or more plants constructed close to each other so that they would be able to share resources like control rooms and spares, the cost would come down to around 11 cents, which is quite good. With advancements in technology, this can even come down to under 10 cents which is considered the holy grail of power generation.

The Queens team found that comparing all costs together, having solar power plants actually gave a savings of over $5.3 trillion over a 100 yr life cycle for the plant, which is quite a bit of money saved, not to mention, quite a bit of environmental damage prevented too.

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